“Anna would’ve told me if she were working on it for them.”
Katie licked her lips and said nervously, “Take this in the spirit in which it’s offered.”
Shaw looked up from the card. “What?”
“Could Anna have been keeping things from you, I mean about what she really did?” She added quickly as his features turned grim, “Look, you weren’t exactly truthful with her. It’s just a thought.”
“It is a thought. I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks.”
“So when do you leave?”
“Soon.”
Shaw’s BlackBerry vibrated. He had some difficulty getting it out of his coat pocket so Katie helped him pull it out. “Do you want me to bring up your messages?” She asked this as she watched him struggling with the device basically one-handed.
“I can manage,” he said, perhaps suspecting that this was a ploy on Katie’s part to read his mail. He glanced at the screen. He had a first-class ticket on the Eurostar out of Gare du Nord station to St. Pancras in London. He’d be staying at the recently reopened Savoy. At least Frank didn’t do things on the cheap. It was partial compensation for a job that involved the potential of violent death on a minute-by-minute basis.
“Will you at least call and let me know what you find out?”
He stood after dropping some euros on the table to pay for the meal. “Sorry, I can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to. That explanation cover it for you?”
It took Katie a moment to realize he was merely throwing her own words back at her, when he’d quizzed her about not getting plastic surgery done on the scar on her arm.
“No, but I guess I don’t have a choice.”
“Thanks for your help. Now go back home and get on with your life.”
“Oh, yeah, great,” she exclaimed in mock delight. “I hear the New York Times needs a new managing editor. Or maybe I can take over Christiane Amanpour’s slot on CNN. I’ve always wanted to cross over to TV. I’ll make millions. I have no idea why I didn’t do it years ago.”
“Take care of yourself, Katie. And lay off the drink.”
He left her sitting there at the table, her head pounding. Five minutes passed and she hadn’t moved, just sat staring at nothing, because that’s apparently all she had left, nothing. Her ringing phone jolted her. It was a stateside number she didn’t recognize.
“Hello?”
“Katie James?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Kevin Gallagher, features editor at Scribe. We’re a fairly new daily based in the U.S.”
“I’ve read some of your stuff. You’ve got some good reporters.”
“Quite a compliment coming from a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. Look, I’m sure you’re busy, but I got your number from a buddy at the Trib. I understand you’re no longer there.”
“That’s right,” Katie said, then quickly added, “Irreconcilable differences. Why are you calling?”
“Hey, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that a reporter at your level doesn’t become available all that often. I’d like to hire you to cover the story for the paper.”
“The story?”
Gallagher chuckled. “At least the only story anyone cares about right now.”
“The Red Menace?”
“Nope.” He said. “We’ve already got a team on that. I meant the London Massacre.”
Katie’s heartbeat quickened.
“Katie, you still there?”
“Yeah, yeah. How would we work it?”
“We can’t pay what you’re used to at the Trib. But we’ll pay you per story at the going rate for somebody like you plus reasonable expenses. You break anything big I can go back for more. You have free rein on how to get the story. How’s that sound?”
“Sounds like exactly what I’ve been looking for. I happen to be in Europe right now as a matter of fact.”
“I call that a kickass coincidence.”
I wouldn’t.
“I can e-mail you the contract and other essentials.”
They spoke for a couple more minutes and then Katie clicked off. She couldn’t believe this incredible turn of events. She checked her watch. She’d just have time to catch the one o’clock Eurostar to London.
CHAPTER 50
THE YELLOW-AND-BLUE EUROSTAR TRAIN left right on time, and once past the suburbs of Paris quickly accelerated to over two hundred kilometers an hour. The rails were designed for high-speed trains and the ride was smooth, with just enough gentle swaying to induce a nice nap if one were so inclined.
Shaw was in first class where he enjoyed a wide comfy chair and a three-course meal complete with wine, professionally presented by a smartly uniformed steward who spoke both English and French. Shaw, however, didn’t eat or drink anything. He just stared moodily out the window.
He rarely thought about the past. But as the train sailed along, he did so if for no other reason than he no longer had a future to ponder. Life had come full circle for him. Abandoned in an orphanage by a woman who was his natural mother but someone he could no longer remember, and then thrown onto the garbage heap of a string of fake families who’d done him no good and much harm, he had constructed his adult life around being a loner. Before he had involuntarily joined Frank’s group he had spent his years going from country to country doing the paid bidding of others. He neither cared about the personal risk nor the moral implications of his actions. He had hurt people and been hurt by them. Some of what he’d done had made the world safer; some of it resulted in added danger for the six billion other people who shared the planet. Yet all of what he had done had been authorized by governments, or organizations acting on behalf of such governments. And that had been the sum total of his existence.
Until Anna had come into his life.
Before he met her he believed his life would end when one of Frank’s missions went seriously awry. And he was perfectly fine with that. You live, you die. Before Anna, Shaw had no reason to draw his life out other than from innate self-preservation. Yet when one is only living half a life even that instinct becomes worn down, dulled over the years. With Anna, he suddenly had a real reason to survive. He prepared harder and harder for each job, because he wanted to come back. To her.
And then he had planned his escape from Frank. And his future life with Anna. And it seemed that he was so close. Even with Frank being Frank, it was still possible, so long as he could stay alive.
And that was the heartless irony that tore at him now.
It had never occurred to him, never even entered his personal equation, that Anna would be the one to die a violent death instead of him. Never.
He stared out the window at the rolling landscape of breathtaking beauty. It meant nothing to him and never would. The only thing of beauty he had ever cared about was currently inside a refrigerator in a London morgue. Her beauty now only existed in Shaw’s mind, in his memories. That should have been a comfort to him, but wasn’t. Eyes open or closed, all he saw was the one person he’d ever allowed himself to love. That image would be with him forever, his penance for thinking he could ever possibly deserve to be normal. Or happy.
He only had one goal now. To kill. After that, he would end his life as he had started it. Alone.
Katie was in another train car one down from Shaw, though she didn’t know it. As the picturesque French countryside raced past, she was focused, despite her new assignment, on the grieving Shaw, and what would happen when he got to London. He would, of course, go to The Phoenix Group building and, with his connections, probably get in somehow. He would also visit Anna’s flat. He would have to go there, she told herself. There would be no way he could avoid it.